History of Function Programing Languages
brief history of function programing in past 25 years in mainstream.
- brief history of function programing in past 25 years in mainstream.
- funny how after 40 years, functional programing languages is really mainstream now.
- began by one giant microsoft fsharp in 2000.
- big risk.
- then, mass familiarization by php (as practical basic just function call for everything) and javascript (due to scheme lisp bone) (and js the good parts by Douglas Crockford) over the year 2000 decade.
- then, brief splash of haskell (the pure one) around 2009. and julia,
- and erlang, elixir, elm, etc.
- and ruby is fp in the small (by each line).
- then, it really exploded. in particular, by rust, to the industrial c cpp bit diddlers (who otherwise dunno a thing about func programing).
- and basically any lang now rush to embrace lambda, eg java, cpp. (golang since it began around 2009.)
- no new langs no support function take or return function, the heart of function programing.
History of Function Programing Languages (AI Answer)
- History of Function Programing Languages
- https://x.com/i/grok/share/8otYjD98sykboKXgfTnXjS1b7
Origins in Mathematics
Functional programming traces its roots to the lambda calculus, a formal system developed by mathematician Alonzo Church in the 1930s as part of investigations into the foundations of mathematics and computability.
In 1937, Alan Turing proved that lambda calculus and Turing machines are equivalent models of computation, establishing its Turing completeness. Lambda calculus, based purely on function definition and application, forms the theoretical foundation for all functional programming languages.
The First Functional Language: Lisp (Late 1950s)
The first high-level functional programming language was Lisp (short for LISt Processor), developed by John McCarthy at MIT in the late 1950s (initially described in 1958–1960 papers).
Lisp directly incorporated Church's lambda notation for functions and introduced features like recursion, garbage collection, and higher-order functions. Early Lisps were multi-paradigm but emphasized functional style. Variants like Scheme (1970s), Common Lisp (1980s), and modern ones like Clojure (2007) evolved from it.
1960s–1970s: Academic Advancements and Pure Functional Languages
In the 1960s, languages like ISWIM (Peter Landin, influencing many) and APL (Kenneth Iverson, 1962) advanced functional ideas.
The 1970s saw a push toward pure functional programming (avoiding side effects):
- ML (Robin Milner, 1973): Introduced strong static typing with type inference.
- SASL (David Turner, 1970s): Emphasized lazy evaluation.
- FP (John Backus, 1978): Promoted function-level programming in his Turing Award lecture.
John Backus argued functional style was superior to imperative for expressiveness.
1980s–1990s: Lazy Evaluation and Modern Pure Languages
Lazy evaluation (computing values only when needed) became prominent:
- Miranda (David Turner, 1985): Influential pure lazy language.
- Haskell (1990): A landmark pure functional language with lazy evaluation, strong typing, and monads for handling effects.
Other notables: Hope (1980), Standard ML (1990), OCaml (1996, successor to Caml).
Key Milestones Timeline
Year/Period Event/Language Significance 1930s Lambda calculus (Alonzo Church) Theoretical foundation; pure functions as computation model. Late 1950s Lisp (John McCarthy) First practical functional language; introduced higher-order functions and recursion. 1960s ISWIM, APL Bridged theory and practice; influenced syntax and array operations. 1970s ML, SASL, FP Static typing, lazy evaluation, and advocacy for pure functional style. 1980s Miranda, Hope Popularized lazy pure functional programming. 1990 Haskell Standardized pure lazy functional language; still influential today. 1990s–2000s Erlang (1986, open 1998), Clojure (2007) Applied functional ideas to concurrency (Erlang) and JVM interoperability (Clojure). Modern Era and Mainstream Adoption
Functional programming remained mostly academic until the 2000s–2010s, when concurrency needs, big data, and parallelism drove interest. Pure functional languages like Haskell, OCaml, and F# gained use in finance, verification, and systems.
Many mainstream languages adopted functional features:
- JavaScript (higher-order functions, since 1995).
- Python, Java (lambdas since Java 8, 2014).
- Scala (multi-paradigm with functional core, 2004).
- Rust, Swift (functional influences).
Today, functional programming is valued for immutability (reducing bugs), easier parallelism, and expressiveness in domains like data processing and AI. Languages like Elixir (on Erlang VM) power scalable systems (e.g., WhatsApp).